“Then let’s blow this pop stand!” Xavier yells as he and Macy make a beeline for the cavern entrance.
“I’m with them,” Mekhi says, right before he fades to the front of the Boneyard—and doesn’t stop until he’s on the safe side of the entrance.
“Me too,” Jaxon agrees just as what I think is a tailbone comes crashing straight down at us.
Jaxon throws an arm up at the last second and uses his telekinesis to send the bone spinning to the back of the chamber. Then does the same again and again and again, as more and more of the tail starts to fall, faster and faster. Flint and Eden are almost at the front now, where Macy and Xavier are standing just outside the Boneyard, Macy wringing her hands as she watches the carnage unfold.
A neck bone suddenly comes flying at Flint out of nowhere, and Jaxon turns and sends it soaring away.
But the split second it takes to help Flint leaves Jaxon vulnerable, and when the next bone comes flying down—an absolutely massive rib bone—he isn’t fast enough, or strong enough, to stop it.
At the last moment, he shoves me away as hard as he can, and I end up tumbling butt-first into a pile of bones, just as the colossal rib bone crashes into Jaxon and slams him to the ground hard enough to knock him out.
86
Grace Under Fire
“Jaxon!” I scream, scrambling up from the pile of bone shards he knocked me into in order to save me. My hands and arms are scraped to hell, but I barely register that as I race across the distance between us. “Oh my God, Jaxon!”
“Look out,” Hudson snaps, and I pull back just as a giant bone—I’m too close to tell what it is—crashes in front of me and explodes into thousands of fragments that have me dropping the bone and covering my face with my arms.
“Okay, go,” Hudson says when it’s safe again, and I finish the dash to his brother just as another bone comes flying at me. It’s a smaller one, and I brace myself for impact, but it explodes moments before it strikes me.
Bone shards fall everywhere.
Seconds later, the same thing happens to a bone that’s about to fall on Jaxon.
I don’t know what’s going on, and I don’t care. As long as bones keep exploding, that means they aren’t landing on one of us, and that is something I can get behind.
I drop to my knees next to Jaxon and start trying to tug the bone off him, but it doesn’t budge. It’s too big, and I’m not strong enough, even when I put my back against it and try to use my legs for leverage.
“Jaxon!” Flint yells and races back toward Jaxon and me.
Mekhi beats him to it—but only by a couple seconds—and then the two of them pick up the bone like it’s nothing and send it flying.
But Jaxon is still out, and when I feel the back of his head, there’s a giant bump there. Huh. Who knew vampires could get concussions?
All around us, bones keep falling in giant, thunderous explosions. I remember watching this documentary once on World War II and how the soldiers suffered PTSD for the rest of their lives from the experience of surviving mortar fire, and now I get it. I really, really get it.
It starts with the sound of something falling from the sky. Then a quick, desperate look up, only to realize that the sky is vast and the sound could be coming from any direction. So you turn, try to identify the source of the sound as it gets louder and louder, only to realize it could actually be coming from the opposite direction you’re looking in and you’ll never even see it before the blast hits you.
The sheer panic of not being able to tell from what direction danger is coming completely steals your ability to even try to save yourself. And in that moment, you feel utterly powerless. Utterly vulnerable. Utterly alone.
Surviving soldiers say they would just run blindly toward what they hoped was safety, never knowing if their next step would be their last.
And now I have an inkling of what they went through, and it is the most terrifying experience of my life because of the total and complete inability to guess where the next hit is coming from.
What happened with Lia was frightening, but this is devastating. Completely soul-crushing.
One after another, bones fall from the cavern ceiling, no rhyme or reason, no pattern, nothing. It’s utter chaos. As each bone slams into a bone pile, fragments fly in all directions, and before long, Mekhi, Flint, and I are cut all to hell.
Still, no bone has fallen on us, so I count it as a win.
But I know it’s only a matter of time. We need to get the fuck out of here—now.
“Can you carry him?” I ask Mekhi. “Just fade to the front of the Boneyard with him over your shoulder?”